In addition to all of its regular duties, the Reno Police Department had a lot happening on Thursday.
After joining the department over a year ago, Reno Police Chief Kathryn Nance has been looking for better ways to serve the community, and one of these ways is adding in two new assistant chiefs and four captain positions.
"This gives that opportunity to streamline the processes, delegate responsibility, and really continue pushing our message forward in one dimension," said Chief Nance. "So, I had goals of restructuring, I knew there was going to be change, what exactly that was going to be I wasn't sure, but this was the final product."
Chief Nance says Reno police hasn't had assistant chiefs since the 1980s, and this is the first time they will have captains in their department.
She tells us assistant chiefs are just as busy as the chief, turning ideas into actions, "And the captains are responsible for taking those actions and those goals and infiltrating them down through the department, really making sure that everyone has the consistent messaging."
One of the new assistant chiefs says he's honored to be taking this responsibility.
"I was a retired officer from California," said Chris Jacobson, Assistant Chief of Reno Police. "To have somebody reach out and ask me to come up and do this was humbling, it's an honor that somebody would trust me with this position and I'm looking forward to the challenges."
In addition to celebrating these new positions, the department also hosted a community input meeting. While this meeting was an opportunity to get feedback from the public, it also helped teach the public how the Reno police are deploying their resources for their patrol units.
"Since this is an ever-evolving changing dynamic that we have with how patrol responds with the community members that want to participate, it's important we do these types of community events every time we redeploy resources or we're looking at major changes in the organization," said Nance.
Chief Nance says it's really important to hear from the community about what they expect from the officers.
She tells us often times at these meetings community members mostly share positive interactions with the officers.
Chief Nance encourages as many people as possible to show up and give their input at their next meetings to help get a full understanding on how to better serve the community.
"I want every age here; I want all kinds of different demographics," she said. "Whatever people show up and want to have input in this that's what's important to me. If you're only hearing from one person or one side of this that's not a very diverse group in our community and we're not getting the full picture, the full story of how we can respond better."
The Reno Police will be hosting two more meetings next week. One in-person one on Tuesday at 6 p.m. and a virtual one on Thursday at 9:30 a.m.
